Swarm Queen's CrownStephanie Adams-Santos

As with her award-winning shortbook A Sundering, the poems in Stephanie Adams-Santos’ Swarm Queen’s Crown wield a sacerdotal power that thwarts simple rational approach. Line by line, the speakers navigate Being’s beauty and deep perplexity—‘the veiled / gore of becoming.’ Line by line the mystery of the Crown builds.

Here is the longbook debut of a contemporary mystic.

‘Adams-Santos is heir to Roethke. She lingers in secret rituals, in the spirit-worlds of plants and animals, conversing in songs and codes. There is a distinct, composed wildness to her voice . . . famished and unafraid. Astonishment, writes Adams-Santos. Why shouldn’t you say it.’